At every turn, right from the beginning, [the modern journalist] made horrible websites, laden with ads, demonstrated no understanding of the medium, and then blamed the medium itself for their inadequacies. As an industry they have always done and said the wrong thing about the open web.
Stop listening to them. They aren’t here to help.
– The Tragedy/Farce of the Open Web according to journalists – Baldur Bjarnason

Baldur Bjarnason makes a compelling case for why we shouldn’t listen when journalists keep telling us that the open web is dead. The open web is very much alive, and very important.

The price of GPL is fairly obvious and easy to understand, even if there is some bickering about what constitutes “linked code.” You don’t have to be a legal expert to get the gist of it: if you want to link your software with GPL code, you must also make your software’s source code available. Specifically, you must make your software’s source code available to your customers, under a GPL-compatible license. You have to give your code away. That’s the price of GPL.

Many developers understand, and view the price of GPL as perfectly justified, while others (myself included) find it unacceptable. So what am I supposed to do? Not use any GPL source code at all in any of my proprietary products? Exactly. Because the price of GPL is too much for me, and I don’t steal source code.

Twitter’s 140-character limit and easy retweeting encourage and amplify negative tweets. Sincerity is less common. Everything is an opportunity for a joke.

Widely followed, long-time Twitter users don’t find the joy they used to when interacting with followers. Some have retreated to private Slack channels, at the cost of public discussion and approachability.

Developers have never completely forgiven Twitter for crippling the API. This doesn’t directly impact most users anymore, but it’s a backdrop that gives every new Twitter feature a tone of distrust. Progress is slow.

Meanwhile, blog comments have slowly been killed off over that same period. The rise of social networks, combined with the technical problems of fighting blog comment spam, pushed most bloggers to prefer answering questions on Twitter.

Turbolinks seems to be a reasonable way to implement a more ”app like” feel to websites without falling into the trap of endless JavaScript dependencies and page bloat.

Turbolinks makes navigating your web application faster. Get the performance benefits of a single-page application without the added complexity of a client-side JavaScript framework. Use HTML to render your views on the server side and link to pages as usual. When you follow a link, Turbolinks automatically fetches the page, swaps in its

, and merges its , all without incurring the cost of a full page load.

Several tech companies, including Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp., plan to file a joint motion supporting Apple Inc. in its court fight against the Justice Department over unlocking an alleged terrorist’s iPhone, according to people familiar with the companies’ plans.

Instant Articles keeps publishers in control. Publishers decide what to share on Facebook, with article templates that mirror the look and feel of their brands. Publishers can even automate their workflow by using RSS to publish Instant Articles directly from their existing content management systems.

Yes, this is the way to do it. If you want people to add stuff to your silo, make it easy for them to do it using their existing infrastructure, and thereby enabling them to cross-post to the silo, as opposed to exclusively create and post there.

And yes, using a tried and tested technology like RSS is a smart move. No, it’s not the latest hotness. Yes, XML feels clunky. But it’s a frozen format. It’s widely understood, easy to implement and most publishers already have it implemented.

There are many outside influences that will interfere with the execution of your JavaScript. That’s why a non-naive and non-arrogant — a dedicated and seasoned web developer — will never rely on it. Instead, you treat it as an enhancement and in an almost paranoid fashion test for the availability of everything before you access it.

Exactly. Progressive enhancements are more important than ever. The fact that the web is accessible from different devices and can be displayed with varying amount of ”flash” and native apps generally can’t and aren’t is a good thing for the web.

I think Dave is right. RSS is definitely not dead, as some people has implied. It’s more alive and more important now than it has been for a long time. It’s an important piece of the puzzle that let us breath new life into the open web.

Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in, but it seems like more and more people who bought an Apple Watch is less and less happy about it.

Here’s the thing, though: the Apple Watch contains a hundred miracles of engineering and design, surely, but serious problems with software and services can turn even the most incredible hardware into something you just sit on your desk and ignore.

Dave Winer’s podcast about the HTTPS transition is something everyone with a stake in the web should listen to. And every single person who calls themselves a ”tech journalist” should listen to his call to action.

Is it worth burning the history of the web for what we’re getting in return, which btw, isn’t clear.
[…]Come on journalists, this is your job.

Why are you continuing to harangue me on Twitter, through email, though doxxing me, through spreading malicious rumors about me, and through hostile threads on KiA? What’s the point? What does this accomplish for you?

It’s a question worth thinking about, because it seems completely at odds with the things you state that you believe – such as developers should be free to ship games without censorship. It doesn’t seem logically consistent to rally to defend games like Dead or Alive from a few stray feminist Tweets, while organizing efforts to harass me and my employees.

Brianna Wu hits the nail on the head regarding GamerGate’s hypocrisy when regarding their claimed protection of ”free speech” at the same time as they try to silence anyone who criticize them or a game they like.

Google really hurt the blogosphere with the dominance of Reader and then its shutdown. It’s good to pay attention to that now. When you start relying on a dominant product, everything is good, because it hasn’t gone away yet. You don’t feel the pain until it goes away.